Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 Vapor-X

Of all the current mid-range graphics cards on the market, the Radeon HD 5770 from AMD has proven to be one of the best. It offers great performance, and has other perks such as DirectX 11 and Eyefinity support. With its Vapor-X model, Sapphire has improved the card in numerous ways, including power consumption and temperatures.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood

When the original Call of Juarez was released, it brought forth something unique… a western-styled first-person shooter. That’s simply not something we see too often, so for fans of the genre, its release was a real treat. Although it didn’t really offer the best gameplay we’ve seen from a recent FPS title, its storyline and unique style made it well-worth testing.

After we retired the original title from our suite, we anxiously awaited for the sequel, Bound in Blood, in hopes that the series could be re-introduced into our testing once again. Thankfully, it could, thanks in part to its fantastic graphics, which are based around the Chrome Engine 4, and improved gameplay of the original. It was also well-received by game reviewers, which is always a good sign.

Manual Run-through: The level chosen here is Chapter I, and our starting point is about 15 minutes into the mission, where we stand atop a hill that overlooks a large river. We make our way across the hill and ultimately through a large trench, and we stop our benchmarking run shortly after we blow up a gas-filled barrel.

The performance once again is neck-and-neck, and at some points, the end results are even less than the reference card. While the Vapor-X is the faster of the two, the results are just too close, and that’s bound to happen.

Graphics Card

Best Playable

Min FPS

Avg. FPS

ATI HD 5870 1GB (Reference)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

58

81.945

NVIDIA GTX 295 1792MB (Reference)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

37

80.339

ATI HD 5850 1GB (ASUS)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

51

69.165

NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB (EVGA)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

45

54.428

NVIDIA GTX 275 896MB (Reference)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

41

51.393

ATI HD 4890 1GB (Sapphire)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

36

51.334

ATI HD 4870 1GB (Reference)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

31

46.259

ATI HD 5770 1GB (Reference)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

28

45.028

ATI HD 5770 1GB (Vapor-X)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

30

44.98

NVIDIA GTX 260 896MB (XFX)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

35

44.023

ATI HD 5750 1GB (Sapphire)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

27

38.686

NVIDIA GTX 250 1GB (EVGA)

2560×1600 – Max Detail

25

33.751

Is this much of a surprise? The game ran like a dream at the game’s top settings, so that becomes our “best playable” without a second thought.